“If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.” — Winston Churchill The Founding Fathers created a Republic, but 60 Senators are poised to take it away. With the pending disaster of the passage in the Senate of a bill nationalizing one sixth of the U.S. economy and our entire healthcare system at a cost of over $2.5 trillion, we are faced with a crucial question: are the Republican senators using every means at their disposal to stop this looming, tyrannical abuse of power? Unfortunately, the answer appears to be “no.” The Senate, unlike the House of Representatives, has parliamentary rules and procedures that give the minority the ability to stall legislation. In fact, unlike the House, the minority have the ability to virtually paralyze the Senate. Doing so is not something we would want or expect for every bad bill that comes through Congress, but the proposed healthcare legislation is probably the worst piece of legislation ever considered by the United States Congress. It is the most intrusive, most damaging, most costly, most dangerous bill to the economic and personal freedom and liberty of individual Americans that Congress has ever considered. If there is any bill that deserves being stopped by shutting down the Senate, it is this one. There are a whole series of parliamentary maneuvers that could be used by Republican senators to stop this bill. There is a hard backstop to the current process (Christmas). The Republicans’ goal should be to prevent Reid from passing the bill before that time. If he goes past Christmas and is forced to adjourn or recess, the momentum will shift in favor of those opposing the bill. How could this be done? Read on to find out just how easy it would be. Then ask yourself why the GOP hasn’t been doing it. Please click here for the rest of the post.

Lately, we have collectively been saying a lot of people are conservatives, the noun, when we should be saying they are conservative, the adjective. Here is a good example: George W. Bush is not a conservative. He is conservative, but not a conservative. While Christianity has certainly always defined who George Bush is, conservatism has not. Put another way in which I think we can all agree, George W. Bush’s gut instinct is a conservative one, but the fiber of his being is not that of a conservative. I don’t mean to pick on a President I like, but it was Rush Limbaugh in 2005, who was the first real conservative (noun) to say George W. Bush was not a conservative, but had conservative instincts. Here is where the trouble comes in — there is no rule to separate between the two. Please click here for the rest of the post.

This is just a friendly Sunday reminder to our libertarian and independent friends that in addition to spending hundreds of billions (or trillions) of dollars on a government takeover of healthcare, and in addition to spending hundred of billions of dollars on failed economic stimulus programs, and in addition to implementing worthless environmental regulation that has the effect of a massive tax increase, the Democrats are still wildly in favor of massive increases in government spending on, well… everything. Please click here for the rest of the post.

Senator Carper (D-DE) has put a hold on Senator Dorgan’s (D-ND) drug re-importation amendment, who in turn, has objected to the Senate moving on any other health care amendments, until his pending drug re-importation amendment is voted on. Got that? It’s a Dem on Dem cage match. Please click here for the rest of the post.

Everyone in the country closely following the ObamaCare saga have been waiting for Senator Nelson (D-NE) to give us a sense of where he is on the bill since his abortion restriction amendment failed last week. Yesterday, Senator Nelson — a long time pro-lifer — said: “I can’t support cloture [ending the filibuster] on the next round,” and that adds a second large monkey wrench in the Senate ObamaCare gears. Please click here for the rest of the post.

He had a fundraiser in New Orleans that he rather badly needed to do, and never mind the rhetoric on how important it is to pass health care rationing. The GOP mocked him, as was only fitting. The GOP is, in fact, using it as local campaign fodder; and so Senator Reid doesn’t get to go to New Orleans. He’s quite upset about it, too*: it’s unclear to whether it’s from being done unto as he has done, or simply because Reid needs all the help that he can get. Please click here for the rest of the post.

Known in Senate circles as the Senator who must have her way – even if it means a few tears in the leader’s office – Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) is the queen of wanting to have it both ways. She wants to run for Governor of Texas without giving up her Senate seat. She wanted to move up Senate leadership without taking a risk to run. She wants to be the “conservative” in the primary, and the candidate with “broad appeal” in the general election. She wants to be pro-choice and pro-life. This leaves one scratching his head a bit. Please click here for the rest of the post.

Erick Erickson is the Editor-in-Chief of RedState. His RedState Morning Briefing stays ahead of competition by delivering breaking news at 5AM every weekday to an audience that includes everyone from grassroots activists to talk radio hosts, television pundits, and print journalists. Erickson also appears regularly as a contributor on Fox News and has a nightly radio program on WSB in Atlanta.